Project Mastodon

by Clifford D. Simak

  "And if one of us gets sick or breaks a leg or--"

  "We'll do the best we can. Nobody lives forever."

  But they were talking around the thing that really bothered them,Hudson told himself--each of them afraid to speak the thoughtaloud.

  They'd live, all right, so far as food, shelter and clothing wereconcerned. And they'd live most of the time in plenty, for thiswas a fat and open-handed land and a man could make an easyliving.

  But the big problem--the one they were afraid to talk about--wastheir emptiness of purpose. To live, they had to find some meaningin a world without society.

  A man cast away on a desert isle could always live for hope, buthere there was no hope. A Robinson Crusoe was separated from hisfellow-humans by, at the most, a few thousand miles. Here theywere separated by a hundred and fifty thousand years.

  Wes Adams was the lucky one so far. Even playing histhousand-to-one shot, he still held tightly to a purpose, feebleas it might be--the hope that he could repair the time machine.

  We don't need to watch him now, thought Hudson. The time we'llhave to watch is when he is forced to admit he can't fix themachine.

  And both Hudson and Cooper had been kept sane enough, for therehad been the cabin to be built and the winter's supply of wood tocut and the hunting to be done.

  But then there would come a time when all the chores were finishedand there was nothing left to do.

  "You ready to go?" asked Cooper.

  "Sure. All rested now," said Hudson.

  They hoisted the pole to their shoulders and started off again.

  Hudson had lain awake nights thinking of it and all the thoughtshad been dead ends.

  One could write a natural history of the Pleistocene, completewith photographs and sketches, and it would be a pointless thingto do, because no future scientist would ever have a chance toread it.

  Or they might labor to build a memorial, a vast pyramid,perhaps, which would carry a message forward across fifteenhundred centuries, snatching with bare hands at a semblance ofimmortality. But if they did, they would be working against thesure and certain knowledge that it all would come to naught, forthey knew in advance that no such pyramid existed in historictime.

  Or they might set out to seek contemporary Man, hiking across fourthousand miles of wilderness to Bering Strait and over into Asia.And having found contemporary Man cowering in his caves, theymight be able to help him immeasurably along the road to his greatinheritance. Except that they'd never make it and even if theydid, contemporary Man undoubtedly would find some way to do themin and might eat them in the bargain.

  They came out of the woods and there was the cabin, just a hundredyards away. It crouched against the hillside above the spring,with the sweep of grassland billowing beyond it to the slate-grayskyline. A trickle of smoke came up from the chimney and they sawthe door was open.

  "Wes oughtn't to leave it open that way," said Cooper. "No tellingwhen a bear might decide to come visiting."

  "Hey, Wes!" yelled Hudson.

  But there was no sign of him.

  Inside the cabin, a white sheet of paper lay on the table top.Hudson snatched it up and read it, with Cooper at his shoulder.

  Dear guys--I don't want to get your hopes up again and have you disappointed. But I think I may have found the trouble. I'm going to try it out. If it doesn't work, I'll come back and burn this note and never say a word. But if you find the note, you'll know it worked and I'll be back to get you. Wes.

  Hudson crumpled the note in his hand. "The crazy fool!"

  "He's gone off his rocker," Cooper said. "He just thought...."

  The same thought struck them both and they bolted for the door. Atthe corner of the cabin, they skidded to a halt and stood there,staring at the ridge above them.

  The pyramid of rocks they'd built two months ago was gone!

  XI

  The crash brought Gen. Leslie Bowers (ret.) up out of bed--abouttwo feet out of bed--old muscles tense, white mustache bristling.

  Even at his age, the general was a man of action. He flipped thecovers back, swung his feet out to the floor and grabbed theshotgun leaning against the wall.

  Muttering, he blundered out of the bedroom, marched across thedining room and charged into the kitchen. There, beside the door,he snapped on the switch that turned on the floodlights. Hepractically took the door off its hinges getting to the stoop andhe stood there, bare feet gripping the planks, nightshirtbillowing in the wind, the shotgun poised and ready.

  "What's going on out there?" he bellowed.

  There was a tremendous pile of rocks resting where he'd parked hiscar. One crumpled fender and a drunken headlight peeped out of therubble.

  A man was clambering carefully down the jumbled stones, making adetour to dodge the battered fender.

  The general pulled back the hammer of the gun and fought tocontrol himself.

  The man reached the bottom of the pile and turned around to facehim. The general saw that he was hugging something tightly to hischest.

  "Mister," the general told him, "your explanation better be a goodone. That was a brand-new car. And this was the first time I wasset for a night of sleep since my tooth quit aching."

  The man just stood and looked at him.

  "Who in thunder are you?" roared the general.

  The man walked slowly forward. He stopped at the bottom of thestoop.

  "My name is Wesley Adams," he said. "I'm--"

  "Wesley Adams!" howled the general. "My God, man, where have youbeen all these years?"

  "Well, I don't imagine you'll believe me, but the fact is...."

  "We've been waiting for you. For twenty-five long years! Or,rather, _I've_ been waiting for you. Those other idiots gave up.I've waited right here for you, Adams, for the last three years,ever since they called off the guard."

  Adams gulped. "I'm sorry about the car. You see, it was thisway...."

  The general, he saw, was beaming at him fondly.

  "I had faith in you," the general said.

  He waved the shotgun by way of invitation. "Come on in. I have acall to make."

  Adams stumbled up the stairs.

  "Move!" the general ordered, shivering. "On the double! You wantme to catch my death of cold out here?"

  Inside, he fumbled for the lights and turned them on. He laid theshotgun across the kitchen table and picked up the telephone.

  "Give me the White House at Washington," he said. "Yes, I said theWhite House.... The President? Naturally he's the one I want totalk to.... Yes, it's all right. He won't mind my calling him."

  "Sir," said Adams tentatively.

  The general looked up. "What is it, Adams? Go ahead and say it."

  "Did you say _twenty-five_ years?"

  "That's what I said. What were you doing all that time?"

  Adams grasped the table and hung on. "But it wasn't...."

  "Yes," said the general to the operator. "Yes, I'll wait."

  He held his hand over the receiver and looked inquiringly atAdams. "I imagine you'll want the same terms as before."

  "Terms?"

  "Sure. Recognition. Point Four Aid. Defense pact."

  "I suppose so," Adams said.

  "You got these saps across the barrel," the general told himhappily. "You can get anything you want. You rate it, too, afterwhat you've done and the bonehead treatment you got--butespecially for not selling out."

  XII

  The night editor read the bulletin just off the teletype.

  "Well, what do you know!" he said. "We just recognizedMastodonia."

  He looked at the copy chief.

  "Where the hell is Mastodonia?" he asked.

  The copy chief shrugged. "Don't ask me. You're the brains in thisjoint."

  "Well, let's get a map for the next edition," said the nighteditor.

  XIII

  Tabby, the saber-tooth, dabbed playfully at Cooper with his mightypaw.

  Cooper kicked him in the ribs--an equal
ly playful gesture.

  Tabby snarled at him.

  "Show your teeth at me, will you!" said Cooper. "Raised you from akitten and that's the gratitude you show. Do it just once more andI'll belt you in the chops."

  Tabby lay down blissfully and began to wash his face.

  "Some day," warned Hudson, "that cat will miss a meal and that'sthe day you're it."

  "Gentle as a dove," Cooper assured him. "Wouldn't hurt a fly."

  "Well, one thing about it, nothing dares to bother us with thatmonstrosity around."

  "Best watchdog there ever was. Got to have something to guard allthis stuff we've got. When Wes gets back, we'll be millionaires.All those furs and ginseng and the ivory."

  "_If_ he gets back."

  "He'll be back. Quit your worrying."

  "But it's been five years," Hudson protested.

  "He'll be back. Something happened, that's all. He's probablyworking on it right now. Could be that he messed up the timesetting when he repaired the unit or it might have been knockedout of kilter when Buster hit the helicopter. That would take awhile to fix. I don't worry that he won't come back. What I can'tfigure out is why did he go and leave us?"

  "I've told you," Hudson said. "He was afraid it wouldn't work."

  "There wasn't any need to be scared of that. We never would havelaughed at him."

  "No. Of course we wouldn't."

  "Then what _was_ he scared of?" Cooper asked.

  "If the unit failed and we knew it failed, Wes was afraid we'd tryto make him see how hopeless and insane it was. And he knew we'dprobably convince him and then all his hope would be gone. And hewanted to hang onto that, Johnny. He wanted to hang onto his hopeeven when there wasn't any left."

  "That doesn't matter now," said Cooper. "What counts is that he'llcome back. I can feel it in my bones."

  And here's another case, thought Hudson, of hope begging to beallowed to go on living.

  God, he thought, I wish I could be that blind!

  "Wes is working on it right now," said Cooper confidently.

  XIV

  He was. Not he alone, but a thousand others, working desperately,knowing that the time was short, working not alone for two mentrapped in time, but for the peace they all had dreamedabout--that the whole world had yearned for through the ages.

  For to be of any use, it was imperative that they could zero inthe time machines they meant to build as an artilleryman wouldzero in a battery of guns, that each time machine would take itsoccupants to the same instant of the past, that their operationwould extend over the same period of time, to the exact second.

  It was a problem of control and calibration--starting with aprototype that was calibrated, as its finest adjustment, for jumpsof 50,000 years.

  Project Mastodon was finally under way.